Danger_Zone
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Posts posted by Danger_Zone
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3 hours ago, Quickmick said:
We are headed here: https://www.oceanicsociety.org/projects/turneffe-atoll-marine-reserve which was designated a marine reserve in 2012 (so not that long ago). We will be studying Coral Reef Ecology, probably measuring some corals maybe looking at lionfish populations and looking a abundance/diversity to see how well the reserve is doing since its inception, especially given that it is fairly 'new.' Part of the reason I am going that it should get me very close to (if not there) earning American Academy of Underwater Sciences' "Scientific Diver" status ( http://www.aaus.org/). Should be good for a lot of reasons!
Well damn, everyone is off doing cool things but me.
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1 hour ago, sjoh197 said:
Finishing up my latest girly flowery art thing. My bf thinks its too girly. I might like, give it to my mom or something lol.
That's really good! I love the colours. It would definitely be a lovely Mother's Day gift if you were to give it to your mom!
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18 hours ago, spectastic said:
understood. i was just wondering what people have done in the past.
and taking on only one of those in the first year is probably a good idea..
I think the adviser's expectation is over 40 hrs/week in the lab. 20 hrs for TA. 10 hrs for classes. suddenly, I'm left with peanuts.
I won't be working in a lab so, this might not be very helpful but I thought I should mention it. I don't think you will know how much time things take until you actually get into the work and research. You may find some weeks you don't need as much as 40 hours, whereas you might during others. As for TAing, unless you are teaching a class yourself I do not think you are going to need a full 20 hours a week. I'm going to be TAing for 20 hours as well, and was told I'd just have to attend classes, hold an office hour or two (which you could use to work in between students showing up), and grade papers. The latter may be especially time-consuming at first, but I think once you get into a routine you should become more efficient at grading. If you find this takes up too much time, I've heard others mention that it is helpful to time yourself when grading papers (to make sure you don't spend too much time on one paper.) So I would advice to see what happens, and try not to worry until you actually get exposed to the work load.
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I haven't started my program yet, but I've been working on learning a foreign language and will be continuing to do that over the summer. I'm also trying to read up on a lot of grad school-related things (thesis/dissertation writing, public speaking, teaching, etc.) so I guess I'm kind of doing research on grad school?
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1 hour ago, rhombusbombus said:
I have gotten nothing about TAing - maybe bc im on fellowship my first year. Entomology dept only has to TA twice for the phd program.
Im psyching myself up to join the powerlifting team to give myself aome accountability. And i kind of want to do roller derby. But i cant skate.
Soeaking of Lyme disease. Thats the only vaccination my dog is missing. So he needs to get that!
I want to do roller derby so bad! It looks really fun! But I am so clumsy, ugh. I think I can skate fairly well though.
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12 minutes ago, sjoh197 said:
My kitties XD
Awww they're gorgeous!
I'm totally down for sharing cat pics.
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1 hour ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:
That's kind of my hope! I'll be adopting one hopefully next Monday... that way I have a week to stay home with it before I need to start working. I hope to go with an older cat (older meaning ~3 years or so) so that they don't need to be entertained all day like a younger cat. I'd love to have a cat that is content with napping in the sun for 12 hours a day, and then will cuddle with me when I'm home. That's the dream!
My old cat was like that. He was about the most chill living creature to ever exist.
I have two cats at the moment (family cats), and my older one has gotten much more relaxed over the years, but my younger one is the complete opposite. I don't know how much can be said about cat breed "personalities" but I'm sure there are probably certain breeds more known to be relaxed. My boyfriend's cat is apparently one of the most "wild" of breeds and she is definitely living up to this! But all cats are different, I hope you end up getting what you're looking for. 
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You guys have really great research topics! I enjoy hearing about what other people are interested in.
@Cat_Robutt I would love to be able to read/research comics all day! Maybe I chose the wrong field.
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49 minutes ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:
I think the 80-hour workweek is more for first year students... and hopefully since I won't be TAing or doing research my first year, I'll have more time to stay at home with my (hypothetical) cat. The cat I've already bought a self-cleaning litterbox, expensive automatic feeder, and cat tree for... hopefully this time next week it won't be a hypothetical cat anymore!
Well now I'm scared! I wholeheartedly love the idea of going to grad school but I need down time. I already have a cat (it's my boyfriend's but he will be bringing her) and have been dreaming of getting a dog for years, so I hope I have time for that! Dogs definitely need more attention.
I don't know if this would help at all (might not if the cat you get isn't playful/easily entertained) but there are a lot of automated cat toys out there that you could invest in. You could either leave the toy(s) on during the day to keep the cat busy while you're not around, or you could leave them on at night to tire him/her out so he/she will (hopefully) sleep during the day while you're gone. I think lots of toys in general are helpful, so you don't have to worry about not being around sometimes (at least once the cat is used to the house), and they seem pretty good at amusing themselves.
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1 hour ago, PoliticalOrder said:
Renewing a F1 visa if you maintain your student status is a very simple process. You are overthinking this.
Thanks for the input. I definitely don't know a lot about the process, I just thought that you would be given a visa for the duration of your program, then if you need more time you can renew it.
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1 minute ago, hippyscientist said:
Haha there's not many things I'm stereotypically British about, but tea and crumpets is one.
@Danger_Zone travelling is great. I would recommend it to anyone who can justify the time. Some of my best experiences have come from it and it's definitely shaped who I am now. I feel more self-assure and ready to start my career now that I've had wanderlust sated for the time being (let's face it, it never really goes away). I'm hoping to be able to take 6 months once tenured (so a long way away) to research and write in South America. I think that would be amazing.
I'd definitely love to! I didn't have the means or money to travel until now, so I will probably start taking vacations during the summer or whenever I have time away from school. But I'll probably be spending a lot of time going up to see my family (although I think I'm finally convincing them to get passports to come visit me occasionally instead.)
I've loved traveling to the US even though the places I've been don't feel very different to me than Canada. But there are so many places I'd absolutely love to go to one day (Germany, England, Scotland, Finland, Japan, Australia.. etc.) Too bad my research isn't on any of these places, though I'll probably get an opportunity to travel for that anyway, even if it's just in the US.
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40 minutes ago, hippyscientist said:
@Danger_Zone nope not from the US but I've spent a decent amount of time there. I worked at camp for 3 months in Maine, have helped set up apartments for my ex in both NYC and San Diego, I've driven across it, my dad's family used to live in Florida...yeah, so while not American, I am familiar a lot with American life! And yes PB&J crumpets are incredible. I still prefer my marmite though. The specialist shops are great for a craving but they never do justice to the stuff from home. As August approaches, I'm trying to run around and see my favourite places, eat my favourite foods and just remind myself of the things I like about the UK (it's not a long list haha). I've got cornish pasties, clotted cream fudge, my mums roast beef & yorkshire puddings and my local curryhouse. That's pretty much it haha.
My mistake then! I'm sure it's true that food isn't the same as it is from the original source.
I have never traveled outside of Ontario and a few states in the US, so I can't say I've had the opportunity to try many foods this way. But I'd love to travel to Europe and elsewhere eventually. There was an awesome shop near my undergrad university which sold British food and candies, but I don't think it's there anymore, sadly.
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9 hours ago, hippyscientist said:
Um I'd email (can you call at all?) again and put my foot down. You don't want to be stressing about that!
Yeah, I decided to e-mail them again. I'm hoping it's just a mistake, I definitely don't want to be dealing with visa issues during the last couple years of my program!
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@hippyscientist Are you from the US originally (if not ignore me)? I think they might sell crumpets in the US. Not sure about popular grocery stores, but if you can find an imported/global/international market then I'm sure they would be there. Either way you can find a lot of cool stuff there! (Also, if you like peanut butter you should definitely try a crumpet with peanut butter. It's delicious.
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I am currently waiting for my F-1 visa documents to arrive in the mail. I checked on the website where I filled out the initial information and find that it says that my visa will last for the next 4 years.... but my program is 5 years. I contacted them and told them this and was told that "if I need another year" that I can file for an extension. But I know it will take more than 4 years because it's a 5 year program. I just don't want to have to deal with that in a few years. Why wouldn't I just get a visa valid for the duration of my program? I still feel like they've screwed up but I did e-mail them to tell them it's a 5 year program. So I don't know if I'm supposed to e-mail about this again or if this is normal.
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@knp I've done some work with children and adolescents. I think even if it didn't help me be more conversational around other adults, it did help me get out of the house and push myself to do things. Plus it was fun (well, mostly.. teens can be a handful.
) That sounds really funny! I guess that's one way to get over social anxiety. @hippyscientist I've been considering signing up for a yoga class or something similar for a while, maybe I'll do that when I move down for grad school. I occasionally do meditation when I am stressed or anxious, and it does seem to help.
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14 hours ago, knp said:
I'm outgoing now, having made that transition, but I absolutely remember how revolutionary it felt to look up at the radio while ordering coffee and be like, "I like this song, huh?" (I assume you're not already working food service or retail? If you happen to, taking advantage of some of the low-stakes small talk opportunities is great practice.) A particularly helpful step, for me, was learning to be moderately interesting about the weather, which is the sort of thing one (me) pooh-poohed as "boring" and possibly "normie" in one's (my) teenage PITA phase. Really, though, you can go a long way commiserating or celebrating something common like that together.
At parties, or other situations where you might have a five minute conversation, not a twenty second one, the more you ask questions, the less you have to talk. People love talking about themselves! "Oh, tell me more!" "What did you think of that?" "What did you do then?" "What was your favorite part of that thing you mentioned?" "Have you seen recent movie, or what do you think of the trailer?" That sort of thing; I find myself more likely to "blank" if I'm talking about myself than if I'm trying to learn more about the other person.
The last thing I did that helped—and this is premised on the fact that my basic affect/tone is/was kind of reserved or mean, depending on how generously you interpreted—was make a point of smiling at the end of sentences or questions. I definitely used to get too freaked about talking to do anything with my face, so I'd be talking in this kind of odd tone with a weird affectless expression on my face, which didn't help me come across as friendly. I was the opposite of a nervous smiler! Turning that around and making a point that I should smile at the end of every third question I asked (or whatever) helped a lot, too, I think. And now maintaining a friendly tone (based on American cultural norms) is just habit for me, so I don't have to think about my presentation so much any more.
I'm not working at the moment. Back in high school/college I applied for some jobs when I was feeling "brave", but I think it really would have helped me if I actually got one. My parents were really against me working while I was in school, so I think I may have just used that as an excuse not to get a job. I was already really nervous about having to work in retail, fast food or something else which would require talking to strangers all day.
I definitely agree about asking other people questions, as I would much rather talk about other people than myself! But at least history is something I really love so I'm happy when people ask about what kind of history I like or what kind of research I'd like to do.
I definitely understand the tone/expression thing as well. I've been told quite often that I seem bored or even sad when talking to people, even though I'm most likely neither of those things. So I'm also trying to work on this, even though it's very difficult to consciously undo things like facial expressions that you might not even realize you're making/not making.
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Just now, Cat_Robutt said:
Thank you for your advice! Seeking help from a professional was fantastic for me; what were some of the small adjustments you made, if you don't mind me asking? I know this is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and have been working hard to deal with stress before it gets too overwhelming!
Of course! I think what has been helping me most is thinking of a long-term goal and how I can slowly work towards it.
I would really like to be able to teach one day, so I'm going to have to work on being able to talk to and be around others more comfortably to do this (of course being more sociable is a beneficial thing even if I didn't want to teach, but I gave myself a reasonable long-term goal to work with.)
So I do my best to just "put myself out there" more, even if I sometimes say silly things. I was always afraid that I'd say something stupid, so I'd never bother to try to talk in the first place, but the more I try to slowly work on this (i.e. trying to keep up small talk with cashiers, remembering to make better eye contact, smile, etc.), the more I feel like I have more things to say to people. I still get this "blank" feeling often (not knowing what to say to people), and I will probably always be kind of shy, but I love to be around other people and talk to them, so if I hold myself back I'm really missing out on things I want to do. I've also had professors/teachers tell me they used to be extremely shy, but are now completely outgoing! So knowing that other people can, and do, improve themselves is really self-assuring.
I hope that helps even though this is more applicable to social anxiety than anything. This is what I have struggled with most which has partly contributed to depression (and the other way around.)
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7 minutes ago, Cat_Robutt said:
Unrelated, but er, I suppose equally important––I have a really serious subject I trust you all with: during my M.A. I dealt with a combination of depression and bulimia. I've since "recovered," but the thought of managing these has cropped up several times recently. I'm a tad worried I will fall back into these destructive patterns of dealing with stress for my PhD program, and was wondering if anyone on this thread has dealt with similar mental health/physiological issues? I'm so, so sorry if this is TMI; I've just found this site to be incredibly encouraging and helpful during this whole pre-graduate school process and am genuinely curious to know if anyone has advice on this front.
I'm sorry to hear you went through that. I think it's actually really common for grad students to experience mental health issues. If you aren't already talking to a professional about this, remember it's definitely an option and you should never feel ashamed. Take the time you need to take care of your mental health before something happens, whether this means talking to somebody or managing your time effectively in order to make sure you can pursue hobbies, spend time with friends, relax when you are feeling particularly stressed, etc. This is important for every student, not just people with mental health issues.
I dealt with some depression and anxiety during undergrad and did not do anything I said above. My life and GPA ended up suffering, but now I'm going into grad school with the knowledge that sometimes these issues can resurface, so hopefully I am better equipped to deal with it. I think I am mostly better but still deal with some socially-related anxiety, but I've been taking this issue day by day. It's really helpful to make small, realistic adjustments instead of expecting myself to be perfectly better right now. Rambled a bit but I hope that makes sense and maybe helps.
- knp and Cat_Robutt
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26 minutes ago, sjoh197 said:
I actually didn't have to make any for that class. I've only ever made 1 thin section... embarrassing. But I sure do know how to push the button on the centrifuge... lol. I spent an entire summer pushing the centrifuge button ever 15 minutes to an hour, for 20-30 hours a week. And I got paid like $10 an hour to do it.
The hardest class I ever took was a "Development of Terrestrial Planets" by my advisor. It wasn't really a lecture, more like a discussion based class. We would read 2-3 papers a week and talk about what was wrong with them lol. And the tests were various problems that haven't actually been solved yet, asking how we would go about approaching them and such. From what I understand... it was the closest to a grad school class I've ever had. We even had to make a god-damned Wikipedia page. I was the only person to actually make an A on the project (and the Class). It was because of all the flashy gifs I made lol
That's great, who doesn't love a flashy gif!
I created part of a wikibooks page for an American History class (mostly the movie stuff), but it isn't nearly as fancy:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/History_of_New_York_State/New_York_State_in_American_Popular_Culture
I also spent a tonne of time editing the page, but people can just kind of come in and add whatever they want (which is great, but we had a lot of random people posting some rather inappropriate things while we were working on it.)
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1 hour ago, pterosaur said:
For those of you starting PhDs, how structured it the course component and requirements? Mine basically requires 10 courses of my choosing, only 8 of which have to be somewhere in the school of science and engineering (the other 2 could be Russian literature, if I wanted). And 1 class has to be theoretical computer science. I could also take any classes I want at MIT. But my courses all have to be approved by some mythical Committee on Higher Degrees. I had to make a program of study for my fellowship, and some of the courses my advisor-to-be recommended don't even show up in the course catalog. So I have no idea what I'm doing or what my options even are. (I couldn't even find a listing of MIT grad CS courses??) So I can't over plan my future schedule. Argh.
I feel like my PhD requirements aren't very structured, which is bothersome when trying to come up with what I want to take, but has given me freedom to take courses on things that are interesting to me even if they aren't technically History courses (for example, I will be taking a Sociology course related to my research interests). My program has a two-part required historical methods course for the first year, but other than that you need to take 3 courses each semester: usually one or two seminars and some kind of more independent reading/research course.
I don't know if this is applicable to you, but one thing that was recommended to me while I'm starting out my PhD is to choose actual in-class courses which will allow you to meet and interact with other grad students, especially if they are just starting as well, since these are going to be people you will be seeing a lot for the next few years.
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10 minutes ago, sjoh197 said:
Well, it's almost May and I still haven't heard anything from my department.
It would be nice to register and stuff, but I haven't heard from anything from the advising staff like I am supposed to.
I'm hoping that May will be the month for me....because I will likely explode by June.
Good luck! I feel like I've never had my patience tested so much as I have by this whole grad school process.
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5 hours ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:
Strange that you guys already know which classes you're taking... I think it's pretty typical to find out the day before classes start in August here
When I first accepted I was told I should start looking at courses, and I was too excited not to anyway so I signed up as soon as I could.
Although one of the courses is compulsory for your first semester, then a seminar is being held by my advisor/on my research subject so that was a given. So then I just kind of looked around until I found something else that sounded interesting. I'm actually taking a sociology course (not my field), but it's a good fit and my program is super encouraging of interdisciplinary studies.
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1 minute ago, Neist said:
Awww. Poutine is pretty yummy!
I can't even make poutine here. It's hard to find decent cheese curds. Boo.
Ok that is true.
And now you can basically get it at every fast food place here. You definitely need good cheese curds for it though, or it just isn't the same (what's up with people using normal cheese!)
We've wined, we've waited, now it's time to celebrate 2016
in Officially Grads
Posted
I'm looking into a chiropractor as soon as I get into the US, it sounds like they can be pretty cheap with decent health insurance. It isn't something covered under OHIP (Ontario health insurance). I'm also excited to (hopefully) get some kind of dental and prescription drug coverage. I've been without these for a year since graduating (and haven't been working, either) so even getting cleanings at the dentist has been pretty expensive (my university's health insurance wasn't great or anything, but it was definitely better than nothing.)